Frequently Asked Questions

What is EMV and why do I need it?

EMV, also known as "chip-and-pin" or "chip-and-signature", is a fraud deterrent for credit cards. The magnetic stripe on cards is slowly being replaced by a chip which makes the cards much harder to duplicate, thus decreasing card-present fraud. This means your magnetic stripe readers attached to your front desk computers will be replaced by external EMV devices that can read a chip card.

On October 1, 2015, the credit card brands (Visa, MasterCard, etc.) are implementing "liability shift". This means all liability from fraudulent transactions originating from a counterfeit card is assigned to the merchant if the merchant does not have EMV-capable credit card readers.
EMV is not a strict requirement, but the liability shift makes the transition to EMV a smart business decision for many InnQuest clients.

With that being said, a hotel's risk of having transactions made by a counterfeit card are extremely low, since card fraudsters don't typically use a counterfeit card and then stay around for a night or a week waiting to be caught!

What does EMV exactly do?

EMV is 30-year-old technology which is designed to protect the card brands (MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover) and merchants from counterfeit cards. EMV determines the card being used is legitimate. Outside the USA, card holders are protected by using a PIN instead of the traditional signature; however, PINs are not being implemented in the USA market at this time.

What is InnQuest Software doing to work with EMV ("chip") cards?

InnQuest Software is working closely with Shift4 so roomMaster and iQ-POS can easily handle EMV credit card transactions. This requires programming changes by InnQuest and certification by Shift4.

Am I required by my processor, InnQuest, or Shift4 to update to EMV?

InnQuest and Shift4 are not requiring clients to update to EMV, and Visa/MasterCard/American Express/Discover interchange rates are not being increased for merchants who do not move to EMV, nor are their any fines being levied by the card brands for not moving to EMV.

What will change at my front desk and/or restaurant?

Processing a chip card requires a special reader that has been certified by your merchant service provider's network as well as by Shift4. Instead of swiping a credit card through a mag-stripe reader, the card holder will insert the card into a slot on an EMV reader. The card holder will still need to sign a paper or electronic credit card receipt.

We will be offering EMV readers for purchase to our clients. These are readers that have been certified by Shift4 and the various credit card processing networks for handling credit card transactions with EMV cards. The reader will have signature capture that integrates with Shift4's Dollars on the Net, so you won't necessarily need hard copies of receipts anymore.

Nothing will change for deposit transactions being processed by roomMaster.net and
iQ-WorldLink since those are card-not-present transactions and EMV does not apply to those type of transactions.

What are the benefits to upgrading to EMV terminals?

There are four main benefits: protection against liability for counterfeit cards, increased protection against data breaches and malware, the ability to accept contactless payments such as ApplePay, and increased guest confidence in your business.

Liability shift has been described above. The increased protection with EMV comes from the implementation of point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenization, which protect credit card data in your network against malware.

The EMV terminal that will be sold by InnQuest includes support for contactless payments, such as ApplePay and AndroidPay, so you can accept those types of payments as well.

As EMV becomes prevalent, cardholders will begin to associate "dipping" a credit card with a more secure form of payment than the traditional "swipe", and therefore will see businesses who don't support EMV as less secure.

What do I have to do?

Contact Shift4 to ensure that your Processor is EMV certified. Not all are.

Contacting Shift4 and/or my MSP

We handle all of the installation support for all customers who go through direct OTN billing with us.

Contacting your IT staff for preparation

There are several steps you can take now that will let you hit the ground running when EMV support is available in roomMaster and iQ-POS:

Make sure you have an additional network jack available at every location you will be accepting card-present transactions. This would mean you would need an additional network jack at each front desk workstation that accepts credit card transactions from guests, as well as each iQ-POS terminal where you would post payments.
An alternative to providing a network jack would be to add a small switch where your existing network connection is for a front desk computer, and then plug the computer and the forthcoming EMV reader into the switch.
We are working hard to ensure a single EMV reader can be shared between two workstations that are close to each other. Please note the devices we will be supporting do not communicate via WiFi.

Make sure you have an additional power outlet available for each EMV device.

Additionally, if you are using a cloud-based server or a server that is not on property, we will have to move the UTG (Shift4 software) to a local workstation within your local network during the EMV installation, per Shift4's requirements. We will need access to both your server (to remove the existing UTG installation) and access to a workstation to install the new UTG. This one workstation's firewall will have to be reconfigured to allow particular ports to be opened. Full details will be provided when we schedule your installation appointment.

Room and tax is posted every night through the Night Audit > Auto Post Transactions menu choice. You must post room and tax before the dayend close is completed. You can select this option as many times as needed, because roomMaster will not repost room and tax to a folio if the folio already has a room and tax posting for the current audit date.

Room and tax is not automatically posted when you check-in a guest unless you have configured an “AutoPost at CheckIn” entry (Setup > Configuration > Guest Ledger > AutoPost at CheckIn).

You can view the total amount of room and tax for a guest’s stay by pressing F11 on their reservation, folio, or folio properties screen.

Cause: It probably isn’t wrong because roomMaster’s availability is very accurate. Instead, you probably have made the common mistake of not considering everything that affects availability – out of service rooms, groups, etc.

Solution: Click on the Availability button (or press F4) and then select Breakdown. The Availability Breakdown window will show all of the in-house, reserved, out of service, and group block rooms for any room type on a specified date. This window is the best tool for understanding why your forecast and availability don’t appear to be what you think they should be.

Comments: Out of service/unavailable rooms, as well as group rooms, are the most common oversights when clients attempt to manually calculate availability.

Also, check that a reservation is not assigned a room type, but a room number of another type is assigned. You can do this by running the Assigned Rooms Report and look for any reservation which has a room type different than assigned room number. These are highlighted with an asterisk.

Finally, you can use Setup > Rebuild Forecast. If the same figures appear on the availability screen, you may want to run Setup > Configuration > File Maintenance > Verify Database Files.

Cause: Not all rooms on a reservation have been checked. “Pending” is the status between Reserved and Checked-In.

Solution: Check-in the remaining rooms on the reservation. Reservations for two or more rooms have to be checked in each time for the number of rooms selected. If the guest does not need the additional rooms in a pending reservation, simply open the reservation and select Cancel Reservation to cancel the remaining rooms on the reservation.

Comments: Multiple-room reservations are intended for situations where guests in the party check-in at different times. You have an opportunity to change the individual names during the check-in process.

Cause: A Reservation Rule has been configured to “Show comment” but no comment text has been added.

Solution: Select Back Office > Reservation Rules Setup. Find a Reservation Rule that applies to the dates of the reservation you have been creating. Double-click on the rule and check the General tab for a blank Display Comment field and a checkmark in Show Comment when making reservation. Either clear the checkbox or enter text.

If you are unable to relocate your equipment to a higher floor, do not store it on the floor.

Battery back-up systems (UPS). Double-check your uninterrupted power supplies (UPS) to ensure they are functioning. Note: these are usually meant to provide enough power to properly shutdown your computer, and almost always do not have enough power to run a laser printer, CRT monitor (flat panels are okay), or fax machine.

If your property has an emergency generator, be sure the above systems are in place to be powered by the generator.

Print contingency reports. Print out the following contingency reports in order to run your property manually. Keep these up-to-date until loss of power occurs.

Inhouse Names Listing. This will include anybody on the “More Names”.

Arrivals, Stayovers, and Departures. Run this report for the next 14 days.

Guest Ledger Report. This will cover all in-house guests, and be sure to check “Include Desk Folios” to get any open master accounts as well.

Housekeepers Report by Room. Select all four statuses.

City Ledger Account Statements. This will cover all open invoices.

Advance Deposit Report. This will cover all reservations with advance deposits.

Credit card backup. You may be without power for an extended amount of time, but still will need to process credit card transactions. Have an emergency credit card processing kit that includes:

Manual imprinters.

Manual imprinting receipts.

Manual guest checks for other sales outlets.

Merchant ID numbers and voice approval phone numbers.

Battery-operated calculators.

We are located in Tampa, Florida. If any changes are made to our Technical Support hours due to storms, updates will be indicated on the home page of our website.

Solution: Select Front Desk > Shift Reports and enter the correct shift/drawer/initials. You may also enter 0 for shift and drawer to get all data for the day.

You may also select the Journal button and scroll to the bottom – transactions you most recently posted will be found there. Double-click (expand) any of these transactions to see the shift and drawer used for your postings.

Finally, select Front Desk > Shift Reports again and use the shift/drawer found in the last step.

Comments: The shift report is a summary of all journal transactions for the specified combination of shift, drawer, and user initials. If there is something which appears to be incorrect on your shift report, go to the Journal and filter on the desired account code. Any of the transactions can be traced back to a reservation or folio.